Chapter 1
711words
My depression had been like drowning in an endless black sea, gasping for air that never came. Loki had been my lifeline, slowly pulling me toward the surface.
I'd foolishly believed our shared trauma had changed him—that he'd finally love me completely. Then last month, he walked through our door with another woman.
Barely a week after my hospital release, he brought her home.
I remember it perfectly. I was carrying homemade soup from the kitchen when I heard the front door swing open.
I turned and—
There stood Loki, umbrella tilted protectively over a woman I'd never seen before, raindrops sliding off the black canopy around them.
She shrugged off her coat with practiced elegance, revealing a perfectly tailored dress beneath. When she smiled at me, her eyes crinkled at the corners.
My body turned to ice.
Of all his "replacements," she was my most perfect mirror image yet—same build, similar features, even that slight upward tilt of the chin that I'd seen in my own reflection countless times.
A cold shiver crawled up my spine like a spider.
My health had finally returned. The doctor had cleared me to try for another child. I'd been saving this precious news, planning to tell him after my next checkup.
Yet here he was, parading a new replacement through our front door.
"This is Cynthia," Loki said with a casual glance my way, as if introducing a distant colleague. "She just got back from abroad and needs a place to crash for a few days."
Something inside me snapped.
"Loki," I hissed through clenched teeth, "I've ignored your little adventures outside our home. Hell, I even understood when you needed your 'outlets' during my illness—finding women who looked like me. But I'm better now. Why the hell are you bringing her into our home?"
The moment those words left my lips, the warmth in Loki's eyes evaporated like morning dew.
A frigid chill replaced it, laced with raw, undisguised anger.
"Alice," his voice dropped to a dangerous whisper, "you'd better watch your damn mouth."
I stood there, shell-shocked. No matter how many times I'd cursed his other women, he'd never spoken to me with such venom.
Cynthia's lips curved into a practiced smile as she extended her manicured hand. "Hello, Mrs. Dalton. There's been a misunderstanding. I'm an old friend of Loki's. We practically grew up together."
She paused, tilting her head as if truly seeing me for the first time. "You know, when I first glimpsed you, something felt familiar. Now I see it—we could almost be sisters, don't you think?"
I dug my nails into my palms, forcing a brittle smile. "Yes, the resemblance is... striking."
Initially, I dismissed Cynthia as just another in his parade of look-alikes. Not the first woman he'd brought home, surely not the last.
Until last week, when I heard those unmistakable sounds coming from our bedroom.
My feet moved of their own accord, carrying me toward that sound.
The door wasn't fully closed. I nudged it open just enough to see—
Loki's body moving over Cynthia's, his rhythm desperate and hungry in a way I hadn't seen in years.
His eyes held a tenderness I'd never witnessed—like emotions buried for decades had finally broken through the surface.
Between kisses, he whispered words that cut deeper than any knife: "I love you, Cynthia, God, I love you... please don't leave me again, I love you..."
That tone, those words—I'd once believed they were mine alone.
His tender gaze had never truly been mine.
The truth crashed down like a collapsing building. While I'd thought myself special among his affairs—the one he truly loved—I was just another replacement. Just the closest match to someone else.
That realization triggered my relapse. The familiar darkness crept back, wrapping around my lungs like a vise.
Now, walking past the park, watching couples stroll hand-in-hand in the golden afternoon light, a strange calm washed over me.
Wasn't this hollow shell of a life exactly what I'd fought so desperately to escape all those years ago?
